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Flying Tigers WWII Military Aircraft fighter warfare US China Air Force poster

Description: Not titled , this is an older unused Print / Poster , during WWII of the Flying Tigers dogfight. Print is NOT indivually numbered and NOT hand signed. The signature is part of the color print. New condition poster print , total size including the white border measures: 22" inches across x 17" high. (Actual color picture image measures: 20" inches across x 15 1/2" height ) new condition , never matted or framed. artist name is Mc Duffie 1996 printed on heavier paper , not the lighter thin poster paper. This poster will be rolled in a 3" inch new cardboard tube. The colors used are more in line with mild , soft , light blur , as opposed to other prints with bright , sharp images. Key words ;; World War II , airplane dog fight -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Flying Tigers were a volunteer flying force from the USA, active prior to Pearl Harbor. The 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC), recruited under presidential authority and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. The ground crew and headquarters staff were likewise mostly recruited from the U.S. military, along with some civilians. The group consisted of three fighter squadrons with about 30 aircraft each. It trained in Burma before the American entry into World War II with the mission of defending China against Japanese forces. The group of volunteers were officially members of the Chinese Air Force. The members of the group had contracts with salaries ranging from $250 a month for a mechanic to $750 for a squadron commander, roughly three times what they had been making in the U.S. forces. The Tigers' shark-faced fighters remain among the most recognizable of any individual combat aircraft and combat unit of World War II, and they demonstrated innovative tactical victories when the news in the U.S. was filled with little more than stories of defeat at the hands of the Japanese forces. The group first saw combat on 20 December 1941, 12 days after Pearl Harbor (local time). It achieved notable success during the lowest period of the war for U.S. and Allied Forces, giving hope to Americans that they would eventually succeed against the Japanese. They are officially credited with 296 enemy aircraft destroyed. There still exists the combat records of the AVG which researchers have found very credible. The AVG pilots were paid combat bonuses for destroying nearly 300 enemy aircraft, while losing only 14 pilots on combat missions. On July 4, 1942 the AVG was disbanded. They were replaced by the 23rd Fighter Group of the United States Army Air Forces, which was later absorbed into the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force with General Chennault as commander. The 23rd FG went on to achieve similar combat success, while retaining the nose art on the left-over P-40s The American Volunteer Group was largely the creation of Claire L. Chennault, a retired U.S. Army Air Corps officer who had worked in China since August 1937, first as military aviation advisor to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in the early months of the Sino-Japanese War, then as director of a Chinese Air Force flight school centered in Kunming. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union supplied fighter and bomber squadrons to China, but these units were mostly withdrawn by the summer of 1940. Chiang then asked for American combat aircraft and pilots, sending Chennault to Washington as adviser to China's ambassador and Chiang's brother-in-law, T. V. Soong. Since the U.S. was not at war, the "Special Air Unit" could not be organized overtly, but the request was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself. The resulting clandestine operation was organized in large part by Lauchlin Currie, a young economist in the White House, and by Roosevelt intimate Thomas G. Corcoran. (Currie's assistant was John King Fairbank, who later became America's preeminent Asian scholar.) Financing was handled by China Defense Supplies – primarily Tommy Corcoran's creation – with money loaned by the U.S. government. Purchases were then made by the Chinese under the "Cash and Carry" provision of the Neutrality Act of 1939. Previously in the 1930s, a number of American pilots including Annapolis graduate Frank Tinker had flown combat during the Spanish Civil War, engaging Nazis and fascist Italians. Members were organized into the Yankee Squadron. Chennault spent the winter of 1940–1941 in Washington, supervising the purchase of 100 Curtiss P-40 fighters (diverted from a Royal Air Force order; the Royal Air Force at that time deemed the P-40 obsolete) and the recruiting of 100 pilots and some 200 ground crew and administrative personnel that would constitute the 1st AVG. He also laid the groundwork for a follow-on bomber group and a second fighter group, though these would be aborted after the Pearl Harbor attack. 1st American Volunteer GroupOf the pilots, 60 came from the Navy and Marine Corps and 40 from the Army Air Corps. (One army pilot was refused a passport because he had earlier flown as a mercenary in Spain, so only 99 actually sailed for Asia. Ten more army flight instructors were hired as check pilots for Chinese cadets, and several of these would ultimately join the AVG’s combat squadrons.) The volunteers were discharged from the armed services, to be employed for "training and instruction" by a private military contractor, the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO), which paid them $600 a month for pilot officer, $675 a month for flight leader, $750 for squadron leader (no pilot was recruited at this level), and about $250 for a skilled ground crewman. Some of the pilots were also orally promised a bounty of $500 for each enemy aircraft shot down, however no one knew if that would actually happen until they returned home and found the funds deposited in their bank Although sometimes considered a mercenary unit, the AVG was closely associated with the U.S. military. Most histories of the Flying Tigers say that on 15 April 1941, President Roosevelt signed a "secret executive order" authorizing servicemen on active duty to resign in order to join the AVG. However, Flying Tigers historian Daniel Ford could find no evidence that such an order ever existed, and he argued that "a wink and a nod" was more the president's style.[ In any event, the AVG was organized and in part directed out of the White House, and by the spring of 1942 had effectively been brought into the U.S. Army chain of command

Price: 15.95 USD

Location: Faith, North Carolina

End Time: 2024-02-07T14:47:16.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD

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Flying Tigers WWII Military Aircraft fighter warfare US China Air Force posterFlying Tigers WWII Military Aircraft fighter warfare US China Air Force poster

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